Kjemisk karakterisering av de uløste petrogenisk komponenter i produsert vann

Produced water from offshore oil production platforms represents the largest direct discharge of effluent into the offshore environment and is known to contain a complex mixture of heavy metals, dissolved organic compounds including hydrocarbons, phenols and organic acids, as well as the residues of oil production chemicals. The petrogenic components that are routinely monitored in produced water are BTX (benzene, toluene, xylene), alkylphenols (C1-9), phenols, oil in water, selected organic acids and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Some of the natural petrogenic produced water components are known to have the potential to harm the environment and able to antagonize the estrogen (ER) and aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR) and antagonize the androgen receptor (AR) antagonists with chromatographically unresolved complex mixtures of PAHs and naphthenic acids identified as the responsible components. There have been considerable advances over the last 5 years in analytical instrumentation and chemometric tools facilitated by the development and availability of affordable high-resolution MS instrumentation coupled to comprehensive chromatographic techniques advanced data handling software. The project team has successfully used a number of the approaches to resolve unresolved components from various sources combined with multi-variate chemometrics statistical tools to relate the toxicity of oil isolates to specific components. Within the current proposal we have sought to focus on identifying the key toxic components of regulatory concern in produced water through the combined use of advanced analytical methods with standard toxicity tests and multivariate analytical approaches.